Summer of Lies From 1961 to 1965 I worked as a dishwasher, busboy and cleanup guy for my stepdad Dick. In 1966 he financed a business for my brother Pat and me, selling fruits and vegetables from a garage on Lake Road, a stone’s throw from his restaurant. Most fruit stands are associated with a nearby farm, selling corn or peaches or whatever they grew outback. I remember one farmer/fruit stand worker’s followup when a customer asked how much a half-peck of tomatoes cost: “Whatever you think it’s worth!” The response kind of boxed you into paying a high price, unless you wanted to insult the farmer. Our fruit stand had a gimmick, too. We were only barely associated with Ohio agriculture. All our offerings were the same as you’d get in a nearby Kroger or Fisher-Fazio store, because our supplier was the same wholesaler who supplied Dick’s restaurant with potatoes for french fries or lettuce for salads. His name was Gelmann, and he operated out of Lorain.
Thus our grapes were displayed in commercial crates, as were our black cherries, avocados, cantaloupes, etc. Costs were about the same as you’d pay in a grocery store, but nobody seemed to mind. We made enough money that we paid for my first year of college at Wooster that fall, as well as Pat’s senior year at Hiram. But never mind all that. In 1967, the summer of love, the summer of Sgt. Pepper, I left Dick’s employ and went to work raking trails for Jungle Larry, of Jungle Larry’s Safari Island, located at Cedar Point Amusement Park, 60 miles west along the lake. The job was a windfall for me. I happened to know a kid at school who was friends with Jungle Larry, a local TV celebrity who ran a zoo and frequently appeared on kids’ shows with animals. He recommended me, and so I got the job. The only problem was I was only 16 -- going on 17. I lied and said I was 18. They issued me an ID card that was good in any beer joint in the region. It was the greatest job a 16-year-old boy could want, cuz I was surrounded night and day by wonderful 18-year old girls, working in concessions, food service, and hospitality. Boys got the best jobs, running the rides and games of
chance. Jungle Larry hired both boys and girls, including the lovely Leilani Haupricht. Cedar Point had a beach, so the girls were mostly tan and beautiful. Some spent so much time in the sun -- I specifically remember this -- the hairs on their arms turned blonde. I thought about those sun-lightened hairs at night in my bunk, in a dorm packed with those very luscious girls. My challenge was to fool these girls into accepting that I could be 18 and in college. To do this I had to act ultra-sophisticated. I knew I could do it, I just didn’t know how. Act sullen? No, that was no good. Talk about classes? No, I didn’t know anything about that. I finally opted to act mysterious and faraway -- never crude -- and let my blue eyes do the heavy lifting. That, I could do. It was a summer of lies. I calculate I did not tell the truth for 108 consecutive days. I wore jungle khakis to work, and an Australian cowboy hat. Larry gave me a jungle nickname, Bwana Mike. I guided tours, swept trails, cleaned cages, fed the non-predacious animals -- monkeys, tapirs, African porcupines, flamingos, parrots -and once I even appeared on on Captain Penny,
the Cleveland kids’ afterschool cartoon show, holding some macaws on a stick. It was fame, of a sort. A bit like the Beatles. Only real. Jungle Larry was an actual person, 6 foot 7, with a Texas accent, who regularly went to Africa and either caught animals on safari or acquired them through a zoo animal brokerage. I thought he was an asshole. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx He told lame jokes. “If I knew you were coming, I’d of baked a snake,” he said 14 thousand and 12 times. All day long, as they people pushed through the pathways, loudspeakers played the theme from the movie “Born Free” over and over morning to night. BORN FREE. In my mind I always whispered “and now they’re in cages.” The lovely Leilani disagreed with me. She had been with Jungle Larry much longer than me, and she swore they were generous and straightforward with her. It was my inclination to continue to see him as an asshole.
As we went along, I learned Larry was Christian Scientist, and did not like to call veterinarians in when animals got sick. Something happened on Memorial Day weekend, when we opened the zoo to the public, that changed everything. Just before the weekend, Larry bought a pair of wild olive baboons from Sudan to Safari Island -- a male named Mombasa and a female named Loma. And I was assigned caretaking duties. Did you know: Olive baboons have longer canine fangs than lions, and a reputation for viciousness! In the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1932, a busload of Italian soldiers was attacked by a tribe of baboons, who tore the truck to bits and killed or carried off scores of soldiers. Baboons -- not to be trifled with. The females also have vivid naked radiant rear ends during estrus that, like solar eclipses, you didn’t want to stare directly into. Both creatures were incredibly strong and alert-looking. Loma was in estrus. Early Saturday we got word that a group of Seventh Day Adventists was aghast because the two baboons
were boning each other in front of their tour group. We arrived in time to stake the two animals apart, so only their fingers could touch. This was at Jungle Larry’s instruction. Then the terrible thing happened. Mombasa strained all the next night and day to reach Loma. Around 5 AM the next day he leaped up, and the chain yanked him so hard his neck broke, and he died in a heap of sawdust. Everyone freaked. We shut down that part of the island. We placed Loma in a traveling cage and pulled blankets over the sides, like a widow’s compartment. We tried to carry on, as if nothing had happened. My job included raking out the enclosure she and Mombasa had been staked out in. Everyone said, Don’t let the baboon get the drop on you. They can tear the eyes out of your head in two seconds. On the third night, after the show shut down for the night, I was raking the pen, and I felt a tiny, strong hand grab my pants pocket. It was Loma, reaching through the bars of the cage. I nearly let out urine. I put my hand on her hand, and she quickly grabbed it and pulled me down, till I was kneeling and facing her.
I could barely make out her golden eyes in the shadow of the cage. I pulled back the blanket to see her clearly. Intensely, she turned my hand over and over and examined my hand. I think she was looking for the perfect place to draw blood. But I was wrong. She was studying the pores of the skin on the back of my hand, and then plucking -- picking microscopic particles from the back of my hand. She was grooming me. Grooming is a major social activity among primates. It is one way a tribe of creatures living together can bond and reinforce social structures, family links and strengthen relationships. It brings peace to even violent groups of animals. I looked at Loma and saw, for the first time, how very intelligent and beautiful she was. And she looked back at me just as fervently. Why was she grooming me? Because she needed someone to groom. It was in her nature to do this,even with captors. I was all she had. In the days and weeks left to us, we communicated entirely by touch and by examination. Summer wore on. Every day I worked, then chased girls when I got out. I even went out with the
lovely Leilani, and we made out in my Buick alongside the chaussee road. No sex, just kissing and crawling around each other. That was all I was ready for. To me, that was enough! At night, however, I snuck back onto Safari Island and spent fifteen minutes with Loma. One Saturday I drove to Hammond, Indiana to see a girl named Sue who quit Cedar Point because I had got too fresh. When I located her apartment and knocked on the door, a linebacker from Purdue opened it. Get lost, he mouthed. I did. I raced back to Ohio, to Sandusky. I knew Loma would be wondering where I had gone. When I got back, there was a commotion. One of the guys greeted me at the gate. “The baboon escaped,” he said. “She climbed up a tree.” People gathered under a sycamore tree. I saw her in the top leafy branches staring out over Lake Erie. I could see from her expression she was only just now realizing how far she was from her home in Ethiopia. There was no easy escape route for her to take. I called to her. Loma … Loma … She spotted me … she hesitated a moment, then began scooting
down from her high perch, like a polejacker for the phone company. I was glad she was safe. I was glad even though the part she presented to my view was her vivid red radiant inflated asscheeks, which I had very ambivalent feelings about. She backed down the lower branches of the sycamore and climbed into my arms, wrapping her arms around me. In that summer of sweetest love, it was the only time I ever held her. Four days later I was scheduled to leave the zoo to start college. I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye to Loma – I was only 16, remember, not a settled 18-year old. See, I even lied to the baboon. So I slunk away, and drove across Ohio to my fall semester. And I put her out of my mind, and lived my life. That was 1967. Twelve years pass. I was visiting Ohio with my wife Rachel. I wanted to show her the zoo where I worked. I was impressed that the animal areas were more natural now, less inhumane, more hospitable than in the olden days.
We came to the primates area. I could make Loma out behind see-through nylon cables now, not bars. There were eight baboons in with her – all babies and adult females. Loma was white in the face now, but she sat like a queen on a log of green concrete, a darling great grandchild, or a great-great, clasped in her golden arms. Loma did not blink, but she fixed her gaze on me. Life had moved on but I could not take my eyes off her. She had survived and done well. She had made a successful career for herself in the jungles of Northeast Ohio. That’s how I remember my girl. As queen of the jungle. That was my snapshot from our summer romance, and the beautiful creature who took me as her mate.